A blog about politics, science, archaeology, human evolution, jazz, culture, and the meaning of life by Michael Balter, a journalist and journalism professor based in Paris and New York (aka The Blog for People Who Don't Have Time to Read Blogs.)

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Monday, October 6, 2014

Why I have taken a leave of absence from Science: to protest the abrupt firing of 4 colleagues

The following was sent to Science's news editor this morning:

6 October 2014

TO:TIM
APPENZELLER, NEWS EDITOR, SCIENCE

FROM: MICHAEL BALTER, CONTRIBUTING CORRESPONDENT, SCIENCE

Dear Tim,

As you know, I have been writing continuously for Science for the past 24 years. I have
been on the masthead of the journal for the past 21 years, serving in a variety
of capacities ranging from staff writer to Contributing Correspondent (my
current title.) I also spent 10 years as Science’s
de facto Paris bureau chief. Thus it is particularly painful and sad for me to tell
you that I will be taking a three-month leave of absence in protest of recent
events at Science and within its
publishing organization, the American Association for the Advancement of
Science (AAAS).

I am taking this action to register my profound dismay about
two related developments:

1.The recent dismissal of four women in our art
and production departments, with essentially no notice in three cases and very
little notice in the fourth case.

2.The failure of AAAS CEO and Science’s Executive Publisher, Alan Leshner, and Science’s Editor-in-Chief, Marcia
McNutt, to make any serious response to sincere and heartfelt concerns
expressed to them, by the overwhelming majority of Science’s news staff, about the way these dismissals were handled.

As you know, the dismissals occurred during the week of September
22. Two colleagues from our art department, and two from production, were the
victims. Although the termination of each was handled somewhat differently, a
common feature was the brutality and insensitivity with which they were dealt
with by AAAS senior management and by our Human Resources department. One
colleague was summarily fired and escorted out of the building; when she was
allowed to return a few days later to clear out her desk, she was not permitted
to talk to any of her former colleagues. A second colleague, who had been at Science for 16 years, was offered a
demotion, and when she declined to take it, given essentially one day to leave
as well. Our print production director, a veteran of 23 years service to the
organization, was told that her position was being eliminated, and given two
weeks’ notice. The circumstances of the termination of a fourth colleague are
not clear, because she apparently vanished without a trace. For various reasons,
I am one of the few people in the news department who knew her; she was a
highly competent and serious employee.

Amazingly, even though the news staff worked closely, on a
daily basis, with three of these colleagues, no explanation was provided for
their departure, and no acknowledgement of their contributions to the
organization over many years was forthcoming—nor has it been as I write. I,
along with most members of the news staff, had to assume that it was related to
the digital media reorganization of AAAS and Science currently being spearheaded by Rob Covey. And by all
indications Covey, who earlier this year was given the title Chief Digital
Media Officer (more on this shortly), was directly involved in the dismissals
of the four colleagues. Thus some of us expected him to make some explanations,
if not about the individual dismissals, at least about how these actions fit
into the reorganization now under way. When our art director was suddenly
terminated last spring, for example, we were at least given a somewhat detailed
explanation by Marcia McNutt. She described a staff a meeting that Alan Leshner
and Rob Covey had with the art director—another veteran employee, who had
graced Science’s cover with so many
beautiful images--to explain why her position was being eliminated. Many of us
were very disturbed at the insensitivity with which that matter was handled,
but little was said at the time.

Yet in the case of the four women dismissed last month, no
such explanation was made, nor even a formal announcement that they were gone.
Instead, on September 25, Covey wrote a short email to Science staff telling us who the new contacts were for magazine
makeup and magazine layout. No mention whatsoever was made of our terminated
colleagues. As one fellow colleague expressed it to me: “Brr.”

So on September 26, the great majority of our news staff
came together to communicate its shock and concern to Alan Leshner and Marcia
McNutt about the way these dismissals had been handled. I am not authorized to
reveal the contents of this very eloquent communication, but I know that you
are familiar with it. Leshner apparently received this communication just at
the time that he was drafting a short note to the staff, which he sent later
that same evening. The note reminded us of the “strategic transformation” that
AAAS is currently undergoing, to enhance its engagement with its members and to
be in the forefront of the “multimedia landscape of the future.” Then, in
reference to the dismissal of our four colleagues, Leshner stated: “Some of you
may have heard that these changes this past week have negatively affected some
of our colleagues. These changes, while very difficult decisions to be sure,
were a necessary part of the strategic and organizational changes that we are undertaking.”

Other than a brief email to one of our editors, in response
to the communication from news staff, stating that he could say nothing more,
Leshner has made no other reply to the concerns expressed. Nor has Marcia
McNutt, although it is unclear just what her involvement was in these
decisions.

By way of background: I wrote my first article for Science in 1991, and was appointed as a
Contributing Correspondent in 1993. I later spent several years as a member of
staff. Although others have far outshined me in terms of production, I have
nevertheless produced more than 350 news and feature articles since coming on
board, and about 250 online stories. I have made Science my primary home as a journalist. Why? I can trace my
turning point back to 1995, when Science
and AAAS held a joint “retreat” in Washington, DC, and I met many of the
colleagues I still know today. You, Tim, in your then role as features editor,
were there if I recall correctly, and I also met the editor with whom I have
worked for nearly 20 years, our anthropology editor Elizabeth Culotta. I
remember so well how blown away I was by how smart, talented, and just plain
nice all of my colleagues were, up and down the hierarchy of AAAS and Science. Never before or since have I
encountered an atmosphere so creative, collegial, and supportive.

I think that this collegial atmosphere continued to dominate
until earlier this year, when the changes that we are currently living through
began in earnest. Rob Covey came on board at AAAS in September 2013, and at
first many of us thought that he was serving mostly in an advisory capacity;
after all, he had a reputation for helping media outlets achieve their design
and digital goals, a role he had played at National
Geographic, Discovery Communications, and elsewhere. I count myself among
those who were happy about many of the changes he brought about, including the
redesign of the magazine, the ramping up of our multimedia presence, etc. But
somewhere along the way Covey began to take on more power and more authority
for personnel decisions, an evolution that has generated increasing
consternation among the staff in all of Science’s
departments.

(In addition, according to all the information I have been
able to gather about it, Covey was responsible for one of the most embarrassing
recent episodes at Science, the July
11, 2014 cover of the special AIDS issue. This cover, for which Science has been widely excoriated,
featured the bare legs [and no faces] of transgender sex workers in Jakarta,
which many saw as a crass objectification and exploitation of these vulnerable
individuals. Marcia McNutt was forced to publicly apologize for this cover,
although she partly defended it as the result of “discussion by a large group.”
In fact, my understanding, based on sources I consider reliable, is that a
number of members of Science’s staff
urged Covey not to use the cover, to no avail.)

In what seems like one short year, we have gone from a
culture appropriate to a nonprofit, membership organization like the AAAS, to
the culture more typical of a Manhattan publisher or a Wall Street
corporation—a culture in which even long-time, loyal employees are expendable
and can be let go with essentially no notice. While the U.S. economy appears to
be recovering, the job market is still very tough; such policies and practices
not only jeopardize the future livelihood of our colleagues (three of the four
women dismissed are over 50), but they undermine their sense of self worth, a
common side effect of being abruptly terminated by an organization they had
regarded as a home. I wonder how many AAAS members would approve of such practices
if they knew about them, especially since they have been endorsed by a CEO who
himself earns just over $1 million/year (with the compensation for Science’s publisher at about $860,000/year
according to the lastest available report to the IRS.)

And much as we grieve for our departed colleagues, we must
now fear for our own jobs, as there is no reason to think that anyone at AAAS
and Science is secure from similar
treatment—including the news staff itself, even if we are not (apparently) threatened
with immediate changes or reorganization.

Tim, I want to make absolutely clear that in my opinion none
of this reflects on your leadership of the news team, to which you have brought
the talent, insight, respect for writers, and vision that sent a major thrill
through the staff when we learned that you were coming back to Science after so many years away.
Speaking personally, I have felt nothing but strong support from you for my
many projects at Science, and I
cannot express adequately how much I appreciate the understanding you have
shown for the passion that I try to bring to them. So it really hurts me, with
a visceral pain, to have to write this letter, even if my three month leave of
absence is primarily a symbolic gesture. I have no illusions that Science can’t do without me for that
short period of time. But I do hope that this gesture, and my decision to make
it public, might help in the larger effort by our colleagues to return the AAAS
to its former humane values.

Thank you for being public about this, and please do keep speaking. Don't assume everyone already knows -- I just found out via facebook, and I wish I could say I'm shocked, but am only angry.

A charitable read would say that AAAS leadership is simply unaware of editorial cultures, and not all that knowledgeable about sci comm, and thought it was doing something sensible and businesslike. It might be helpful then if a letter signed by many of us in sci writing and publishing went to AAAS leadership saying, "this is not how it's done, you've already been embarrassed by this cover that thought it was being flashy but was instead merely bigoted, and there are healthier ways to achieve your goals, but in the meantime we don't want to be associated with this product."

I hope also that others will understand that although this does involve principle it's not exactly stepping off a cliff, careerwise. What I see is that demand for capable translators of science is intense.

Congratulations to you from someone with vast experience of the kind of injustice and obtuseness you have described. So happy to have retired from this game, if not completely enough. Neither you nor anyone at Science ought to be experiencing a jumpy stomach upon beginning the work day, but that's exactly the symptom such behavior produces first. Get off your hosses, you miserable bosses!

As someone who's been in the sciences for 55 years and who has been closely involved with professional societies during that whole time, I've been watching Science's rapid devolution into something more closely related to Wall Street than to academia with a degree of horror. How can an allegedly honorable society escort people into the street as though they were common criminals? How can AAAS management not know that they are destroying their own image, carefully built up over the last century and a half? Hyperion to a satyr, indeed. Very sad.

Thank you for your public attention to this. Finally, someone speaks out about the inappropriate restructuring and devaluation of dedicated professionals at AAAS. Shame on leadership to allow this to happen under their watch, it’s a disgrace to AAAS and should have warranted much greater attention.

I would like to note that you are likely not aware of many of the other dedicated employees that Rob Covey affected. Apparently he was given full reign to dismiss anyone regardless of their value to the organization. This may have been a collaborative effort on the part of AAAS leadership, however I find this hard to believe of a CEO that lead the association to success for so many years.

I too was a veteran manager dismissed after 13+ years of service and dedication (AAAS was my home). I was dismissed without warning, recognition or acknowledgement of my substantial 13 year contribution. I was told not to return to the office for the next few weeks of employment because it made Rob Covey uncomfortable (really?).

In prior years leading up to this, I received accommodations and bonuses for my service to Science. I was consulted and requested to participate in many high-level AAAS affairs. In fact, I applied for the position that Rob now holds and was praised for my value to the organization by Dr. Leshner, and other high-level leaders, for my contribution. I was assured that there was a leadership role waiting for me in the reorganization. Then I was suddenly terminated without cause.

AAAS lost a tremendous amount of talent; editors, online-editor, creative managers/director, IT staff and many other high value employees within the organization. From what I understand Rob hired the staff from his previous employment, and this was allowed. I guess this callus firing of valued employees is the new strategic AAAS digital media reorganization plan.

Well done Michael, this is a whole familiar story regarding how institutions (mis)behave. Our generation spent years building a sense of solidarity between human beings but a certain political climate has led to such deterioration - it's happening all over the world. WE MUST react, and symbolic gestures like yours DO MATTER.In solidarity, Umberto

When I knew Alan Leshner when he was at NIH, I knew we could all count on him to focus on the science. He didn't play politics. He didn't allow subordinates to take control. He was always in charge, calmly and with humor.

Alan - what happened to you? You need your dedicated staff more than this one-year old employee, no matter how flashy he comes across.

The irony, of course, is that a 23-year veteran at Science would have been hired when Science was a print-only publication and have already weathered the initial shift from print to digital and countless other shifts in digital technology over the years, including the dreaded "Y2K"—anyone remember that one?—only to be deemed unfit to weather the transition to "digital first," whatever that is. But of course a new broom never wants anyone around who might recognize when their "bold new ideas" are just old ones with trendy new names. Plus the new broom covets the relatively high salaries of the longtime employees, which can then be reallocated toward themselves and their pet projects, or their friends/sycophants. Nothing new about that, sadly.

The search is OVER for a new curator of biological anthropology!

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About Me

I have been a working journalist for the past 40 years, beginning in Los Angeles as an investigative reporter and then in Paris as a travel, food, and science writer. For the past 20 years I have covered anthropology and archaeology writer for Science, Audubon, Scientific American, SAPIENS, and other publications. I have also covered sexual misconduct for The Verge, Scientific American, and others; I write about mental health, especially schizophrenia; and I engage in occasional media criticism. I returned to the USA in October 2017 after 30 years in Paris, and now live in the New York City area.
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